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50 Kitchen Life Hacks That Will Change Your Life

Cooking may seem like an insurmountable challenge, but the kitchen can be your ideal workspace with a few key life hacks.

Managing a kitchen can be exhausting. Recipes take time and it can be a little overwhelming, especially to a new cook, to manage all the utensils and tasks you need while cooking.

Thankfully, there are a few tricks you can pull. So many things in life can be made manageable thanks to life hacks. Though cooking may seem like an insurmountable challenge now, the kitchen can be your ideal workspace with a few key life hacks.

Freeze juice in ice cube trays to flavor your drinks.

Shop at restaurant supply stores for better equipment.

Freeze extra juice to use for soup broth.

To make pretty pancakes, fill an icing tube with pancake batter (after cleaning out the tube). Squeeze the batter into a design on the frying pan. The batter will spread as you cook it, making a perfect pancake shape... with your design on it.

Pop the stem off an avocado. If the inside is dark, it's too ripe to eat.

Cut wedges of fruit, and place it into jars of water and ice. The flavor will spread.

Cook pancakes in a rice cooker.

Use a power drill to plow into an apple, and, as it spins, use your peeler on it.

Place eggs in a bowl of water. If it sinks, it's good. If it stands up, you need to eat them fast. If it floats, chuck 'em.

Cut out the center of a burger by pressing a glass into it, and taking out the middle. Crack an egg into the burger hole, and fry. Perfect egg-burger combo.

To carve corn off a corncob, take a bundt cake pan and stick the corn into the central hole slot. Carve the corn off, and let it tumble into the pan.

Place a clove of garlic inside a bowl, place a bowl of the same size on top of that to make a closed-off chamber, and shake the bowls back and forth. You'll find the clove pealed away. If not, keep shaking.

Store cookies in Tupperware with an apple wedge. The cookies will draw moisture from the apple to keep them from drying out.

To cook tuna in a can, place oil-soaked pieces of toilet paper over the can. Leave a pocket of air before igniting the paper. Let it cook for as long as you deem necessary (25 minutes is good).

Store brown sugar with a piece of bread or marshmallow to keep it from getting stiff.

Soften brown sugar by placing it under a damp towel, and microwaving it.

Cut the head of a sheer of corn off, and then pull the corn free of the leaves.

Place an ice cream carton under a stream of hot water for about fifteen seconds, then watch as all its contents slice out nice and neat.

Heat a knife by running it under warm water. It can cut cold things perfectly now. Like your ice cream.

To open a jar lid, try to break the seal by wedging something under the lid, and prying—until you hear a pop. Twist it off after that.

Squeeze juice out of lemons using tongs.

Add two eggs and a cup of oil to cake mix to make it cookie dough.

Crack two eggs into a mug coated with vegetable spray, scramble with fork, and add salt/pepper. Place mug in microwave for forty-five seconds. You have scrambled eggs.

Crack an egg into a mug half-filled with water. Submerge it in water. Microwave for forty-five seconds. Poached egg in a mug.

Mix cheap wine with fruits to enhance the flavor.

Drop a (clean) penny into a bottle or cup of wine, and let it sit there for about a minute or two. Weak flavor? Gone.

Boil garlic in milk or water for a minute to mellow the flavor.

Dip onions in vinegar to sweeten them.

Place a cherry bottom-side down on top of a beer bottle. Poke straight through it with a chopstick. Cherry—de-cored.

To soften butter, spear it on three chopsticks to make a tripod. Place that tripod on a plate, and microwave it for a few seconds. Butter—softened.

Instead of ice cubs, cool drinks down with frozen fruit.

Use unscented dental floss to cut soft things in nice, even cuts.

Replace vegetable oil with butter to make desserts richer (though less healthy).

Replace water with milk when baking (also unhealthy, but delicious).

To make a sunny-side up egg, crack the egg into a cup, pour the whites in first, then, after whisking them, put the yolk in.

Mix milk into scrambled eggs to make them fluffier.

Wrap a wet towel strip around your cake tin when you're using it to bake to make your cakes flat and smooth on top.

When cooking over an open fire, wrap your food in tin foil. It spreads the heat over everything evenly.

Poke holes in your burger patties to keep them from getting super thick.

Place a raw egg inside a shirt sleeve. Wind the shirt sleeve on both ends, and shake the egg around. That will scramble the yolk inside the egg shell. Then, boil it.

Secure fruit you're cutting between two unused lids so you can cut them all at once in one, neat cut.

When making pancakes, put the pancake batter into a cookie cutter on the frying pan. Especially good for the holidays.

To keep guacamole from going brown, put a layer of water over it.

When warming up food from a Mexican restaurant, keep the guacamole separate from the rest of the food to keep it fresh.

Cook bacon in the oven to make it extra crispy.

Warm cups by running under hot water for a few seconds. You can wipe the water off, but the cup is nice and heated up.

Place butter out of the fridge under a warm glass to soften it up.

To peal an orange fast, cut the top and bottom off, then cut a straight line perpendicular to the prior two cuts to the other side—not straight through, but just to the skin. Peal the orange back. You now have a row of orange wedges.

To pluck egg shell out when one gets mixed in with your egg yolk, wet your finger, and poke it. The egg shell will come away.

Also, try to grab egg shell fragments with the rest of the shell. It'll scoop it out for you.